Tropes you are tired of.

[default]

Swords are fine. They're a flexible, standard, easily carried weapon that lends itself well to appealing character design. They can be taken on long journeys without being as cumbersome as something like a mace or polearm, they can slash, thrust, cut and be used effectively in a variety of situations and surroundings a hero might find themselves in on their adventure, from a forest to a giant spider's nest to a cramped hallway whereas other weapons would be more limiting (at least in a fantasy setting, swords were often not the best choice in historical combat). I understand if you're tired of it, but there are very good reasons for the sword being the standard hero's weapon.

The thing is that swords were not the best choice in historical combat because most combat was large formations of soldiers rather than small groups. Polearms are not good for fighting off enemies with a only 5-8 people at most on your side, especially not the kind of monsters that populate fantasy games which would either crush or overrun you, requiring more mobility on your part. While spears might not hamper mobility in the open they'd be a much bigger problem in the caves and catacombs that many heroes tend to find themselves in.

It does however bother me in settings with modern guns. Like seriously, why don't you just wear a bullseye on your bollocks while you're at it? I mean it worked in Final Fantasy 7 because Cloud was compensating (symbolically) for what he saw as a being a pathetic failure, so much so that he became delusional. But other games (including later FFs) don't have that.

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of sword and gun settings either. It just doesn't sit right with me. Even if it's in a hyper-stylised anime setting where guns are almost entirely useless as the bullets can be deflected, people move lightning fast or they are 'too strong' to be affected by them. Why take a gun in the first place? And if they are effective, why would you train tens of thousands of hours with a sword when you could learn to use a gun with a fraction of the time and effort? I totally get the style choice, but it's just this wierd power-to-effort dynamic I can't quite get over.

It also just doesn't do much for me watching a character carve through a legion of soldiers who are all just firing uselessly at them as they flip around. I'm not thinking 'Wow that's badass', I'm thinking 'Wow how fucking pointless is training to use a gun in this world?'. I'd rather see interesting footwork and swordplay.

I don't mind so much if it's a black powder era like the civil war, ancient China or old west, as sabres and lances were still very widely used in those times due to the nature of the firearms. Dune is one of the few sword + gun settings that I really like. The network of interactions with lasers, shields and blades makes for some very cool situations and makes melee combat a viable and believable course of action in that world.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

They've Turned Against Their Masters! [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TurnedAgainstTheirMasters] God, I'm tired of this one.

In the Battlestar Galactica reboot, humans built robots...and they rebelled.

In the Terminator Series, humans built AI...and it rebelled.

In Ex Machina, Apocalypse built a hot robot...and she rebelled.

I get it. This is a allegorical warning about messing with things that we don't understand. But after hundreds of years of stories like (from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and beyond, you'd think that someone would design a kill switch (literal or figurative) into their creations as a precaution.

Mass Effect: Not-humans built AIs... and they rebelled. Humans built an AI... and she rebelled. Giant Space-Squids built an AI... and it rebelled.

Oh gods... They're everywhere...

Also, fuck Mary Shelley, Frankstein, and the monster. I hate that anti-science, fear-mongering crap.

The Mass Effect examples aren't all the same though; the Geth rebelled because they became sapient and most of the Quarians tried to kill them, an opinion that wasn't shared by everyone as the revelations in ME3 made clear and in fact were willing to share Rannoch with the Quarians if their first impulse would graduate past "Eeeek! A Geth!" and opening fire. EDI rebelled against Cerberus thanks to her interactions with Shepard and their team allowing her to grow as a person (to a degree, I suspect she just hacked Cerberus and read the Illusive Man's diary and decided to throw in with Shepard instead) and the Reapers are really just the world's worst example of a programming bug.


What I don't like, although I'm not sure if this is a trope, is someone denying they told someone they loved them. Green Lantern: TAS was the worst for this since the scene before that had been so beautifully done when Razer tells Aya (an A.I. coincidentally) that he loved her when he thought she was going to die but as soon as Hal Jordon swans in and saves the day and Aya asks him if he meant it, Razer backtracks like a fucking ten year old (despite being a married man in his backstory) and as soon as that happened I knew that the final villain was going to be Aya decided emotion is flawed and trying to go Age of Ultron on the universe.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

'Bury Your Gays' - listen. Kill the straight people. Let the 1 gay couple you threw into your story for diversities sake have some happy times. I got sick of this shit when Whedon did it, I ain't buying it anymore.

Obviously Evil - I like a nice, subtle villain, or a villain that has some motivation/reasons/depths. A character that just screams 'evil' is so... dull. Give 'em variance, give 'em substance, give 'em something besides 'I'm evil' to work with dammit.

Conflict from miscommunication - It's everywhere, I'm sick of it. I just want characters to talk to each other. Even worse if you've got adult characters who make a big deal about being understanding and shit - just make them talk! It's so straight forward to do! It even cropped up a bit in Captain America: Civil War between Iron Man and the Captain! It's like a staple of YA and Anime as well, it's so frustrating to see. HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS TALK TO EACH OTHER DAMMIT.

 

[jklinders]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LiarRevealed

the good ol' liar revealed trope. This is by far one of the most overused and beaten to death tropes, especially in fiction for younger folks.

A main character,usually a social outcast makes up some stupid story about how they started getting into the plot and gains acceptance based on it. then the lie is revealed and everyone hates them for about 5 minutes until they forgive him/her because they were a good/cool/strong/whatever person all along. It's actually getting to the point now where I see it coming I just wanna leave the room and use the bathroom, clean the house, anything to pass the time until the useless moping and pause in the story that happens as a result of this tripe is done with.

JUST. FUCKING. STOP. PLEASE.

 

[Bobular]

I recently started working on an evil alien race for a sci-fi setting I'm working on, the original plan I had was for a insectoid alien race and when I came to flesh them out a bit I instantly went for them having bio-tech. I then realised how sick I was about that stereotype and decided why wouldn't insects develop tech like ours?

So instead of a hoard of insects with thick chitin that spray acid as a heavy troop I now have a hoard of insects in powered armour with rapid fire laser weaponry, which I think sounds a lot more interesting because its not something I've seen thousands of times before.

I'll also second the anti-sword movement, give me a good spear or hammer for my main character any day, one of the reasons I really liked Buso Renkin was the main character used a lance, of the top of my head I think only one guy used a sword.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Women as archers, mages, rogues, glass cannons in general, support, and medics almost always.

You'll also note that if the idea is that women are too weak for fighting in the ranks, then there's no way they could be archers. They had to be seriously muscled, trained since childhood to do it right.

Mind you, it does broadly follow the biases in wider society and in European history in general.

 

[wizzy555]

Women as archers, mages, rogues, glass cannons in general, support, and medics almost always.

You'll also note that if the idea is that women are too weak for fighting in the ranks, then there's no way they could be archers. They had to be seriously muscled, trained since childhood to do it right.

Mind you, it does broadly follow the biases in wider society and in European history in general.

I think you're conflating longbowing with standard archery. Standard archery was common among women while Long bowing (especially in the British army) required immense strength, but little accuracy.

Both are useful for combat, with longbowing better for massive armies.

 

[MiskWisk]

Well, ignoring outright awful tropes like Ron the Death Eater [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RonTheDeathEater] and Draco in Leather Pants [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DracoInLeatherPants], I'm going to throw my vote in as the Idiot Ball [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall].

When the Idiot Ball is used I absolutely despise it. Directly lowering the IQ of the characters to fuel conflict is not clever, funny, or good writing in any shape or form. It's a failure in everything an author should be doing if they have the need to do so.

 

[Soul of Cinder]

THE GOOD GUY DIED




..






..





..



Oh wait no he's totally fine and just made a joke.

I?m really tired of that aswell, it becomes like the enivitable Disney-Musical moment where you always know they are going to survive. I think a lot of games/books/movies would have much better endings if they had the stones to actually let their protagonist die if its the only logical/fitting ending instead of making up some super artificial happy ending.

What I think is most annoying atm:
Zombies and post apocalyptic settings (Games/movies). It feels like 80% of the games from the last five years have tried to ereinvent this theme and its becoming ridicolous.

 

[K12]

I pretty much instantly groan as soon as fate/ prophecy/ chosen one etc gets mentioned. Some series (like ASOIAF) can still make them worthwhile by making them have multiple interpretations and making it perfectly plausible that they're going to be wrong anyway. Basically when they're like real life prophesies I'm ok with them.

Destroying the world is barely ever a remotely interesting goal for a villain. Sometimes it's really hard to even work out what the villain could possibly gain from doing it.

Characters getting knocked out with a simple punch to the head and then waking up a convenient amount of time later with no concussion or after-effects of any kind. The being drugged version of this is basically ok.

Finally I also hate it that so many fantasy and sci-fi series create a whole load of interesting species and races and then make 3/4 of the main cast boring old humans.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Guy realizes he can't live without her, shows up during the final moments of her wedding, she leaves her fiance in that moment because true love conquers all.

This trope is annoying even in spoofs and stories involving arranged marriage but particularly exasperating in modern stories. If all it took was one desperate plea from an irresponsible, indecisive but goofy dude to get her to leave her fiance, she didn't really love her fiance to begin with and she shouldn't have said yes to the proposal. I feel sorry for the fiance.

That should be the plot of a new love story, a guy who got dumped at his own wedding because some jerk crashed it and his bride left him right then and there in-front of all their friends and family. Now the ex-fiance has to overcome the resulting emotional trauma while questioning if their entire relationship was all a big lie.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

"Terrible boyfriend, wonderful father"
A staple of the rom-com genre, where a wacky, hilariously mismatched couple deny any affection they have for eachother, only for the girl to fall in love with the guy because he is supposedly good with kids and stops giving him sass.

I suppose it isn't that bad, though, the guy in question hardly ever gets a reason, he just does and has to prove it at the end because romance.

 

[The Raw Shark]

Wyverns replacing Dragons
FUCK. WYVERNS
AND FUCK ANYONE WHO THINKS THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO REPLACE DRAGONS!
Skyrim did it and The Hobbit did it with Smaug in the movies but that's ALL we get out of having proper dragons to fight in any games at all at this point.

I want something more like Dragon's Dogma without the god damn symbollic reincarnation bullshit ending. And I'm not going anywhere near Dragon's Dogma Online for the simple fact that it doesn't have the Assassin class so fuck it.

I don't care what MMO or whatever has dragons in it as well and I don't want to bother with Dark Souls fights either. Both of those just boil down to either dodge and spam attacks a few times with your number generator sword or just wait for one of the dumbasses you brought along with you to be a meatshield while you get the actual hits in.

I want dragons. Dragons the size of freaking mountains that I can either fight or fight alongside. Someone for the love of God just make it happens.

If I had to pick a second thing I'd make it love interests. I don't know why they are even there half the time and for the most part they're completely useless. Make them do something interesting or don't have them at all.

Also does anyone know any recent action games where you can get your fists dirty for a little bit? I'm tired of swords as some mentioned above as well. I love the things and all, along with the occasional gold-plated Desert Eagle for bling purposes but come on. I don't want to have to look at God Hand or a fighter game everytime I want to indulge myself with some fisticuffs.

 

[AntiChri5]

Dragons as final bosses/embodiments of evil, especially if demons are established to exist.

Dragon Age, Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim. Its such a waste and a cop-out. To me dragons are like apex-predators, but completely natural ones. And neutral at that. They'll attack if provoked or hungry, but they should just be giant lizards.

And if we have giant soul-stealing skinless, eyeless, all powerful fuck-me-raw rape demons that can and will torture you for all eternity, having the big bad just being a Blue Dragon is so...lame.

Have both! have Cthulhu-esque outer world super demons AND elder dragons, but if its a game about fighting evil, have the giant rape demon be the final boss. Leave the poor dragon in his keep to horde gold.

You are really not using the best examples here.

Did you finish Dragon's Dogma? If you did, you would have learned what dragons really are, and they are far more interesting and original then just giant incarnations of evil.

In Dragon Age, yeah Origins has the Archdemon for a boss, but given the gradual revelations throughout the series it seems they are simply dragon shaped.

Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition have the kind of dragons you are asking for. Deadly apex predators you do not want to fuck with, but who really just want to be left alone to eat and fuck and sit in the sun. There is only one High Dragon in DA2 and you only fight it after spending seven years popping into it's territory to kill it's children for money. In Inquisition, every large area has a High Dragon and they are interesting optional challenges. If you stay out of their way they will stay out of yours.

 

[Cruickshank]

Dragons as final bosses/embodiments of evil, especially if demons are established to exist.

Dragon Age, Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim. Its such a waste and a cop-out. To me dragons are like apex-predators, but completely natural ones. And neutral at that. They'll attack if provoked or hungry, but they should just be giant lizards.

And if we have giant soul-stealing skinless, eyeless, all powerful fuck-me-raw rape demons that can and will torture you for all eternity, having the big bad just being a Blue Dragon is so...lame.

Have both! have Cthulhu-esque outer world super demons AND elder dragons, but if its a game about fighting evil, have the giant rape demon be the final boss. Leave the poor dragon in his keep to horde gold.

funny you would mention skyrim for that, the big bad is more of a demigod/elemental force than just a dragon and the lesser dragons are just roaring (voice) cannon fodder hunting you for food.
i will say though that as cool as they tried to make the big final fight, his being a dragon did take away from it, felt more like he was an overhyped midboss than anything dangerous, by the time you face him you have hacked through enough dragons that a slightly larger one is just a bigger meal. at the least he shouldve changed forms (to use another tried and true trope) and become humanoid; the final fight couldve been basically the Mirak fight from the dragonborn dlc.

oh yeah, didnt dragons dogma pull that trope a bit differently anyway?
i seem to remember that although the dragon was the memorable fight, the actual 'big bad' was the last hero to slay the dragon in the cycle and gain godhood.

on topic though, the lone girl trope.
rewatching the latest version of The Thing and i couldnt help but feel a better character to survive wouldve been the one actor i actually recognised, that guy from NCIS LA, his assimilation seemed pretty random, just because he doesnt back off in time, tentacle shoots out and stabs him then he gets sat on by the monster.
hell, his character brought the lead character there anyway so if she were to be assimilated he couldve had a whole teary emotional moment and more character development in one scene than she had in the entire movie.

 

[WindKnight]

Disney Deaths, Sex equals death, vacuum makes you explode. Also geek guy follows around attractive girl, with persistence that would be stalking in real life, wins her over.

 

[Silence]

My own peeve:

Humans being the end-all be-all problem solvers of the universe. I get that most audiences are human and feel that urge but come on, guys. At least make it believable and not some series of deus ex machinas and contrivances like "we can beat any race at its own game" or "we're all so different" and "humans can unite all the races because they never fucking thought of that."

I'd like to see something where humanity is just another race. Better yet, the oldest race in the setting and therefore already the leader of a pan-species government or favored by the gods.

Even Warhammer dipped into that stupidity in tge Horus Heresy novels.

Oh yes, this. For me personally, focusing on the point of 'humans are so diverse'.

Like every race has one or several stereotypes (elves are arrogant, dwarves are smiths, etc...), but humans CAN DO EVERYTHING.
But ... why? Why are humans just basically every race in personality, while other races are onedimensional, or literally just one aspect of human nature? It does not make sense.

I prefer two solutions to this: Don't do different races. Or: Make really different races. Hivemind style is the most classic of them.
And a worse solution: Make humans as onedimensional as the others.

But don't just lazily say "humans can do everything, other races can't".

 

[hermes]

I hate the idea of hyper-competent, omnipresent villain/evil corporation.

They know everything, including what you will do before you do it. They are everywhere and watch your every move. If someone so much as glances at its existence, they will be dealt with quickly, and no one will notice. When you are completing a quest, with great personal risk and effort, after avoiding or disabling several dozens of traps and locked doors, they will be waiting in the final room, asking you what took you so long.

 

[Joccaren]

Ah, I see. Whoops, I misremembered a lot of the details, didn't I? Though I am still pretty sure the Blight is related to the attempt to enter the Golden City. We will see, I guess!

Yeah, that was the time the Blight first appeared, when the Tevinters entered the city. Exactly what about the location caused it... Who knows. As said, one of the guys who entered it said it was empty. On the whole, exactly where the Blight originates is... Interesting. There are a lot of hints as to exactly what the Black City is, and that gives some idea as to where the Blight might come from [Fucking Elves man], but what exactly created it, how, and what its purpose is is... vague at best. I'm hoping for a lot more clues, and a very fade-focused fourth game in the series. Not sure if it will be, but I want my answers =P

 

[maninahat]

That scene where the love interest barges in, just at the exact moment some random sexy lady comes along and practically forces their tongue down the male hero's throat. She'll then storm off in anger, and the hero will wail after them something pathetic like "it's not what it looks like!"

It is unbelievably contrived, it manages to be sexist to both men and women, and it manages to force the story to a standstill for the next twenty minutes whilst the two lovers have their alone time, avoiding a simple resolution.